Angry People

It’s been an intense week but the drinks trolley has been round and I’m drinking a glass of red wine as I type - a very civilised way to end the day. Feedback about this weeks work has been very positive. While some good results have been achieved, the toll of the long days this week are showing and I can’t wait to get home this evening for a quiet beer with the missus.

No lie in tomorrow though - I have a tai chi class at 9.00 which, although early, does set me up nicely for the day. Jane has been learning too, so I we are able to share this activity instead of my having to negotiate my personal time!

As for the weekend, I think some quiet exploration of the local area is in order, especially if the good weather continues - nothing too strenuous. Due to the ex-wife taking the boy to Disneyland, visiting the SW has been delayed - next visit planned for early Feb.

Ok, a little bit of time has elapsed since my last post and for a dedicated blogger there is no excuse. Fortunately, as you can see, I am not a dedicated blogger and the original purpose for this site has been met but not capitalised on.

Over the Christmas period, between visiting family and friends followed by moving from Exeter, Devon to Staines, Middlesex I drove almost 2000 miles. No wonder then that our little Metro required work equivalent to the value of the car on it’s annual MoT test! Oh well, has been trouble free for 2 years and we’re not in a situation to get a new car just yet.

We’ve settled into our new home although, as expected, there are still a few boxes to be unpacked. Herself has interest from some employers and a promising interview next week. I have been so busy since I started my new job on Monday that I barely get time for a shite, much less writing this blog.

The future of this blog is undecided at the moment - due to both lack of time and lack of direction. Next post when you see it!

The presence of my annual winter cold has left me with little spare energy for extra-curricular blogging. In fact, just keeping my eyes focused on a screen has been agony of late.

My partner is of the opinion that when sick you should stay home, shut out the world and get better but I suffer with the feeling of guilt when taking a day sick, even when I’m really, really sick. (I should add that I have had 2.5 days sick this year and 0 days last year). The problem with this approach, from a health perspective, is that it takes so much longer to get better.
The British workaholic attitude seems to have been made worse by the Thatcher years, where the attitude was ‘you get what you work for’ etc. and is not tolerant of loafers.

Although the UK already has the highest working hours in Europe, a contributing factor in sickness, no-one wants to be associated with the idea that they take ’sickies’. I’m sure everyone knows someone that has as much sick as they have holiday, or always take the same days off. There are also regular news stories in the national news about how much sickness costs the economy so what can be done?

When I was 10 years old, I won the school spelling contest (you wouldn’t know it now) and as a reward was allowed to pick a book from the school’s book club. I picked a book that described how we would live and work in the future (ie by the year 2000 - woo!)

It said that technology would have advanced so much as to make our lives easy; we would work only 3 days a week, probably from home. I wonder what the social effects would be if people really had that much free time? Would it lead to a better society or to a decline? Good material for another post!

Personally I think greater acceptance of, and opportunity for, working from home is the best idea. After all, even if you are ill you still get some work done, if not as much when you are healthy, and as an additional benefit you are not spreading illness to colleagues.

Fireworks night is really an event for the kids, and now that fireworks are used at a drop of a hat, for all types of occasions, it’s not even that special for them. All the same, as an excuse for a social gathering and some exercise in the Autumn air, my partner and I decided to walk to the Double Locks and meet friends to watch their fireworks display.

We arrived and were immediately taken aback at how many people there were, even compared to last year. The separate queues for beer and food were already significantly long so we each joined a queue.

Little did we realise that this would also defeat the purpose of the visit. After queueing for an hour we were almost at the point of being served; that is to say my partner was inside the bar tent and I was behind the big tree, by the food hut. Consequently, neither of us saw the fireworks.

Worse still was the rip off prices being charged for the food. The portions of chips were £2 each and the hog roast / burgers were all in the region of £5. The greatest rip off for me was that having queued for over an hour to get my hog roast, while watching huge piles of meat pass my by in the queue, when I received mine there was barely enough to fill the bun and half of that was fat.

Rather than stick around, having already been disappointed and ripped off by the Double Locks, we all walked to the nearby Port Royal where we spent the rest of the evening discussing the poor customer service and rip off prices that the Double Locks provide, along with all the previous times that we had visited and been disappointed by poor customer service or not received what we had ordered.

We enjoy going to the Double Locks because it is a nice walk along the canal or across the fields but my advice is don’t go to the Double Locks for the food.

I don’t have time to blog about the predatory lending practices, that have left both the US and global financial market in such a poor and unstable state. However, while reading a news story at the BBC I came across a term describing these ’sub-prime’ loans:

Ninja loans

No Income No Job no Assets

While I was out in town at lunchtime, I experienced some really poorly designed shops. In particular was WHSmith, which was disorganised and cramped, with product moves going on during the day. In the end, I gave up trying to locate my desired product and went straight to Ryman’s the stationers.
Tesco Metro is no better. Since their redesign, some aisles go across the store, some aisles go along the store, some aisles are narrow and some are wide and there’s usually a few cages blocking the aisles and some products. Worse, the popular lunchtime products are immediately inside the store, where a bottleneck prevents entrance and egress. Worst of all is the new payment system. There is no organised queuing system, just a load of tills on little islands (some deserted) as well as a row of self-pay machines that no-one knows how to use.In contrast, I recently visited the brand new Debenhams store, just for a look, you understand. The menswear section is on the ground floor just inside the door, which shows a good understanding of their visitors shopping habits.The aisles are wide and unobstructed and the clothes are logically grouped and accessible. The tills are close to the products and the blokes can leave the store either via the way they came in or by walking through the equally well implemented perfume and beauty section, with the opportunity to enjoy the presence of the fine assistants on the way!There seems to be a lot of similarity between a well planned bricks and mortar shop and a well executed, accessible, search engine friendly website. The experience reminded me that not so long ago I wrote a shop analogy, for an e-commerce website audit, for one of my company’s sales guys:

Check there is access to the shop at all times.

Check that, if there was no access, the correct notices are given on attempting to enter.
For example:

If the shop is temporarily shut, I would expect a note saying so. Without it I might assume the shop had shut permanently and go to a competitor rather than come back later.

If the shop had moved the entrance to another door there should be a note explaining to use the other door in future as the entrance has been permanently moved, otherwise I might assume the shop had shut permanently and go to a competitor rather than start using the new door.

Check that the shop had a good sign that was visible under all conditions and described the store accurately.

Inside the store I would visit all the sections, checking how easily I could move between them.

I would look at whether all the products are accessible, and had their own descriptive labels.

I would be looking for areas where products are only available by asking staff for service or where products are only available at certain times. Also, what response does the shop give for products that are not available? Will they be there in the future of is it end of line?

I would check out the local newspapers and yellow pages, phone/trade directories to see if the shop was listed, and also note the quality of the listing as well as compare competitors listing.

Where I noticed that the shop staff had put the wrong notes on the door, I would provide advice on what note to put up and when.

If there were access problems in the store, like dead ends, or aisles that you can get down with a basket but not a trolley, or is the store a maze that just confused customers?
I would suggest alternative layouts.

This analogy can go on and on, and is easily adapted, but I think you get the gist.

For those of you that have an understanding of HTML, HTTP and SEO - I hope you enjoyed the analogy!

Maybe one day store designers and web designers alike will come to understand that there is more to having a store/website than having the premises and filling it with products.

Two essential considerations:

The first rule of business is - let people know you’re in business.

If people have to think, in order to buy your product, they wont!

When I made the last post (currently removed), the layout broke!

Testing 1… 2… 1… 2…

Having just read and participated in a thread at aikiweb I was left pondering the purpose of Aikido.

Is Aikido is a means of teaching physical self-defence? How well does it fit the purpose and how good do you need to be to feel safe?

Is Aikido is a means of spiritual development? How is this aspect taught?

Is Aikido a social activity not dissimilar to morris dancing?

Even if there are intrinsic answers to these questions, the true value of Aikido will, as with any pursuit, always be determined by the practitioner.

On a physical level, I find that Aikido is a framework for learning about how to move, how the body works, distance and timing and about the principles of Ai-Ki. This is, in practice, untested because I have never needed to fight.
On a spiritual level, I find that Aikido is a practice into which I can bring my own challenges; a space for me to examine my own perceptions and reactions. This is not taught or discussed in Aikido but is personal to me.
On a social level, I find the camaraderie between students is unlike any other type of friendship. This is not to be written about but discovered.

So, in the modern world, there is very little need for physical self defence. My understanding was that the martial arts were first formalised by monks, during the warring states period, who needed to protect themselves and stay healthy to survive for long enough to make progress on their spiritual path.

The battles we face, in the modern world, do not result in immediate death however, continually losing these battles may contribute to our death eg failure to deal effectively with stress, anger and emotional challenges. Does Aikido help us to ‘fight’ these battles? How about the smaller personal ‘battles’ that occur in daily life; those that leave us looking like a tit - are these not ‘lost battles’? Does aikido prepare us for and teach us how to deal with them?

When I started writing this I had no goal in mind, and through consideration of the question, I find that I am even further from answering it. Perhaps the question is too big? Maybe I’ll break it down into more manageable chunks in further posts.

The All in One SEO Pack is an essential Wordpress plugin. It gives you the ability to control the page titles, meta description and meta keywords as well as add a meta noindex tag to archive and category pages.

Is this important? That depends on whether you place any value on how your blog is seen by the search engines. The aspects of the page that the All in One SEO Pack gives you control over, are those aspects of the page that make it stand out as unique. In its default installation, a Wordpress blog does not give you control over these ‘inner workings’ of your site and that’s fine and well for most people.

One aspect of this plugin that does not require any effort to use is the option to add a noindex tag to archive and category pages. These pages contain snippets of original post pages and as such can be seen by the search engines as copies of the original pages. These may confuse the search engine and the wrong pages can be presented in the search engine results. This is obviously no good if you want visitors to find your pages by searching. Why would you want this? - Perhaps because you have monetized your blog, perhaps with ads. (Yes, I’m thinking about it!)

I would say that this SEO plugin ads functionality that should be in the default Wordpress install - whether you choose to use it is up to you.

Testing appears to be focused on the candidate performing techniques however, it seems to me that a greater emphasis is often placed on the art of ukemi in regular training.

As far as I am concerned, when taking ukemi for someone who is grading, one should make every effort to give the candidate as much to work with as possible (as is appropriate to their grade) and give the best ukemi you can manage. A grading is an opportunity for them to showcase their techniques.

In truth, unless you are practising for some other specific outcome, I think this should also apply to regular training.

My definition of a poor uke is someone who meets some or all of the following criteria:

Does not continue to give (makes attack then becomes static)
Is rigid rather than alive/springy
Does not move out of the way of atemi
Does not roll/fall unless they absolutely have to then complains

Now, all of the above is variable with grade and you would not expect a beginner to be able to have any greater skill at ukemi than you would technique. The point is that they should develop together.

What happens is, those people that are poor uke’s train with and take grading’s with people that are good uke’s and so advance in grade however, in my experience (15 years) someone’s ukemi that has reached a plateau and not developed for some time… probably wont.

It may be that this will ultimately prevent their ability to advance their technique but it seems to me that a larger component of achieving grades in aikido is time served, rather than technical ability.

You may be thinking, “ah! This guy has people that he cannot move and he is blaming them for his poor technique.” And you are, in part, correct - but, this is not my point.

My point is whether ukemi should be tested, as part of a grading, in the same way Ki style clubs have separate Ki gradings and some clubs have separate instructor gradings. The same people with poor ukemi skills that have achieved sempai grades are usually the first to try and ‘teach’ you how to perform a technique like them, whilst forgetting that it is your good ukemi that allows them to get away with their poor technique.

So my second point is relating to ukemi: by performing ukemi correctly are we deceiving our partners? Should one perform ukemi for a poor uke in the same way they do it for you?

In conclusion, I think Ueshiba was ahead of his time and humanity is not yet ready for Ueshiba’s aikido, which was intended as much more than a purely physical art. The spiritual side I am currently struggling with as much as the physical side - as perhaps this post demonstrates.
Part of the problem is that there is no sparring in conventional aikido so there is no way for a poor uke to discover their failings. I would also suggest that many teachers are afraid of correcting students, that have achieved a certain grade, for fear that they leave.

Should ukemi be tested?

Perhaps grades should be awarded on ability rather than tested for?

Gradings are a modern convention created in response to the militarization of the martial arts and their teaching methologies, which for some reason have mostly been maintained. Why is that? Oh yes… ka-ching! The militarized model is the same as the commercial model (but that’s another discussion). Also, there is an element of “that’s just how it’s done” - but if Ueshiba had thought like that he never would have created Aikido.

This brings us back to the ever present “What is Aikido?” and I really hate the word is!

Added: I’ve just been reading an excellent article on Aikido Journal titled: The Virtues of Aikido